


The Other Side

by magicknickers



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicknickers/pseuds/magicknickers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, things are not as good as Hermione thought they would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dramione Couples Remix over at livejournal with the couple "Daisy and Gatsby." Thank you to my beta, Cleodoxa!

There was something about Draco Malfoy that Hermione had always found intriguing. Something about the look in his eyes, the way he carried himself. He always looked as if he had some sort of grand purpose, as if he knew exactly what he was supposed to be doing at all times. It was a trait of the purebloods, that arrogant walk and knowing look. 

Hermione Granger did not usually feel that way, and she envied him for it. 

She was adrift--caught in the sea of depression that had followed not long after the fall of the Voldemort. Her life’s work, everything she’d ever studied and trained for had died with him. It was more than mildly disturbing, but she sometimes missed that feeling. The feeling of being needed, of doing something important and special. They’d saved the world and now she had nothing.

So here she was, sitting alone in Grimmauld Place--a place she'd been forced to move into when Ginny had decided to leave the Burrow for the flat Hermione had been previously sharing with Harry--staring out through the library’s single, enormous window. It should have shown her the inside of the house next door, but all she could see was green. Hills and trees and endless navy sky, studded with more stars than she’d ever seen at once. 

Harry refused to live here because it brought him memories of Sirius that were still too painful to look at, and Ron was far away now, married to Padma Patil, whose velvet-dark eyes and length of dark hair were too much for Hermione to compete with in the end. 

Life was so bloody ironic. Ron and Padma?

Not to mention that she was thinking about Draco Malfoy--Draco bloody Malfoy who’d hated her since the day he laid eyes on her--in a way that could almost be considered as fond. 

Muggle-born Hermione Granger was the only inhabitant of the Black house. Even more irony.

“Toujours pur, indeed,” Hermione murmured, standing up and tucking her wand away inside the deep recesses of her inky black cloak. It was stifling, living alone in this house of grey and loss, and more exhausting than she’d thought when Harry had been here, too. 

The wallpaper was faded and so were the mahogany floors, growing colorless with age. She was sure that this house had once been beautiful, made lovely with color and fabric and the obscene amount of wealth that the Blacks once seemed to embody.

Draco Malfoy was the last true Black other than Andromeda, and Teddy didn’t really count, but he was living in a flat somewhere in Muggle London while she sat in Grimmauld Place. Hermione ran her fingers along the wall, coated as it was in a fine film of dust and grime, as she made her way to the front door. She figured the walls here must have been purple once, deep and almost burgundy, because the dull grey-lavender they were now had bloody red threads running through them when she looked very closely and stood very still. 

The door was only a few feet away from her now, but she stopped, staring at it tiredly, suddenly unsure of herself. She couldn’t visit Ron and Padma because they always went out on Wednesdays, and Harry would probably be brooding in his flat, unaware of even Ginny’s company anymore.

“Diagon Alley,” she said to herself, “I’ll go to Diagon Alley.”

She opened the door and stepped outside, caught in the thrill of the cool night air. Malfoy--she called him Draco only in the privacy of her own mind, late at night when she was alone and her boys were somewhere else, they were always somewhere else, but that was a different story now, wasn’t it?-- worked at the Ministry. Then again, so did she, but that was only sometimes. Hermione Granger didn’t actually have to do anything for a living if she didn’t feel the need to. She was already in the history books, wasn’t she? Only twenty-three years old and with an Order of Merlin, First Class to her name, while men like Severus Snape had done more than she ever could and sat rotting in their graves.

Diagon Alley was crowded as usual, bustling with the night-crawlers and pleasure-seekers of the Wizarding World. It was a different place once the sun went down--Knockturn Alley didn’t seem quite so far away, and the few hole-in-the-wall bars that offered dancing lit up like Carnival floats all down the street. There were still little families roaming, venturing into the few restaurants and toy stores that were still open this late in the evening. She couldn’t focus on anything in particular, though, because her mind kept drifting to Malfoy, who’d been known to frequent these parts with his wife and newborn son. Hermione frowned at her own infatuation. Since when did she read the society pages?

Since she’d gone and fallen in love with Draco Malfoy.

Ironic, that’s what it was.

She Apparated home.  
***   
It had started, of course, with the War. Everything came down to the War in the end, didn’t it? 

They’d been camping for what seemed like some ridiculously long, insurmountable amount of time, and Harry had acted rashly and said the taboo--Harry’s stupid Gryffindor pride wasn’t worth dying for if she was really considering things--and she’d been the one to truly suffer, screaming and crying like some sort of animal on the floor of Malfoy Manor’s grandest room. The nightmares still came to her, even when she’d been staying with Ron, however brief that period of time may have been, sneaking up and haunting her like some sort of curse. 

Then, well, Draco Malfoy had cast the Cruciatus curse on his Auntie Bellatrix and taken her with him to Paris, of all places. He’d grabbed her hand as Bellatrix shrieked, obviously horrified with her nephew, and Apparated right out of his own home, leaving Harry and Ron to fend for themselves. Hermione hadn’t particularly cared about anything right then and there, having fallen unconscious sometime during the trip to France, but Harry and Ron had made it out without her help in the end.

That was what she’d always marked as the beginning of the end for the Golden Trio. They’d escaped the Manor without her help. She hadn’t really been necessary after all. 

She’d missed them, and they’d missed her, but nothing could change the week it’d taken for Harry to feel it was safe enough to send his stag after her, right into the Muggle hotel room that Draco and Hermione had been sharing.

The first two nights she’d been moaning and thrashing with fever dreams, calling for Ron, Harry, Ginny, Luna, Remus, anybody. Sirius and Snape had been in her thoughts as well, oddly enough. She hadn’t thought of Sirius much for years, and Snape, Snape had been evil at that point, hadn’t he? Still, she’d called for them, too.

Then, when she’d been well enough to get around on her own, three days into it, they had bickered and complained, both speaking some French, but not really enough to get by properly. No wand usage--the Ministry could track that--and they couldn’t stay in the same city for two nights in a row. It had been awful, almost worse than the camping because there were people everywhere, closing in and talking and touching her as if nothing was wrong, even in the smaller towns closer to the sea. She didn't want to leave, though. Those fragile days with Draco made her feel safe.

Something had changed.

Between the cramped quarters and the lonely shores of the Atlantic Ocean, it was impossible to stay so angry and contemptuous with each other. 

“Blood doesn’t really say anything, does it,” he’d told her, forming it like a question but having enough conviction in his voice to make it sound like a statement. It had even seemed like he’d actually believed what he’d said.

“No,” Hermione had answered, running a hand along the gauze that had wrapped her arm, “it doesn’t.” She had almost been able to feel the word Mudblood straining through the wrappings as she’d taken her healing draught, brewed by Draco with the heat of the fire she could bring up for him wandlessly. 

The television had been on, playing an obviously old, even more obviously American film that’d been dubbed in French, though the lazy drawl of the actors could still be heard very faintly beneath it. Hermione and Draco had settled together on the loveseat, and he’d been staring at her with an odd sort of intensity that had managed to make her both extremely uncomfortable and unbelievably hopeful.

She’d been very sure in that moment that he’d been going to kiss her, right there on the French loveseat. And maybe he would have, if they’d had a just a moment or two more to themselves.

As if fate had decided to remind her of who she was and what she still had to do, a familiar white stag had pranced in out of nowhere, taking that look right out of his eyes. And they’d been Granger and Malfoy again, first names forgotten with more difficulty than she’d have thought.

“Potter can cast a full Patronus?” he’d asked, absolutely certain that it hadn’t been Ron’s, even though he could perform one as well. Looking almost jealous, he had glared at the stag, pale eyebrows pulled together and fists clenched so that the knuckles turned white. It had been then when she’d realized that he’d never before cast a Patronus, and she’d decided not to mention Ron.

“Yes,” Hermione had replied, sighing softly as the beast began to speak, Harry’s voice filling the room, “He can.”  
***   
The next day, unfortunately, Hermione had work. She‘d finally found something relatively interesting to do with her endless time--a spot of research on time-travel. The wards on the darker books of Grimmauld Place’s library had finally given way beneath her endless months of unweaving them, one thread of magic at a time. Hermione was never one to shirk her duties, though, so she walked into the Ministry without complaint.

It had barely been two seconds since she’d stepped out onto the Minister’s floor before Kingsley was dropping a load in her arms and telling her to go home and get some sleep.

“Granger.” Hermione glanced up from the sheaf of papers Kingsley had greeted her with a few moments before, a little bemused at his request.

Draco Malfoy.

Gods help me.

He stood there with his silvery eyes hooded, the look on his face unreadable. Pale, white blonde hair fell to his shoulders, framing his face rather artfully as he handed her another piece of folded parchment.

“Here’s another,” he whispered, smirking for a short moment before continuing, “It’s been a long time.”

It really had been.

He turned on his heel, charcoal-colored robes swishing a bit like Professor Snape’s used to, and strode down the hallway, far away from her. She worked on-and-off in the Department of Defense, and he…well, she wasn’t really sure what he did. 

It didn’t matter, though.

Not at all.

Then Pansy walked by and it started to matter more than it should have, a sharp pain going through Hermione’s chest. Pansy Parkinson, the girl who’d caught him just months after that week in France.

“Blood doesn’t really say anything, does it,” he told her. His eyes were lovely, silver to her gold. She smiled. They matched.

It came back in fragments and pieces, that week. One long, stretched out remembrance of blond hair and French-speaking and ugly hotel rooms. The taste of the healing draught lingered in her throat for a moment at the recollection. Even now, seemingly unimportant things would float up from the depths of her mind, and she would remember something else, another glimpse at she-and-Draco. Hermione had definitely not been well, and Draco’s above-average Potion-making abilities had probably saved her life several times over.

Gripping the papers--letters, she realized belatedly--Hermione couldn’t help but stare as Pansy sauntered into the Minister’s office, dark hair shiny even in the dim lighting and specially tailored robes probably worth more Galleons than Hermione cared to think about, even now, being as well-off as she was. Pansy Parkinson walked like a pureblood, the swing of her hips and tilt to her face touched by something that Hermione didn’t think she would ever comprehend, surrounded by it as she was.

Her hands tightened on the stack as she made her way back to Grimmauld Place. She felt odd, almost anticipatory. The House was still grey and painful, but she had something to do, some sort of duty, trivial as it was. She needed to take her mind away from Pansy because the tight feeling in her chest was beginning to grow unbearable, and Hermione could do nothing to stop the growing ache.

There were twenty-two letters in total, not including the one Draco had handed her. It was lighter than the others, less decorated, and had no name other than her own on the envelope. Hermione guessed that it had been anonymously hand-delivered, though it didn’t explain why Draco had been the one to give it to her.

All of them seemed to be letters from admirers and the like, which the Ministry usually went through to detect if there were any dark spells or enchantments attached. About three-fourths of the letters Harry ever got were hateful, nasty things that were meant to harm. His psyche was damaged enough without adding insult to injury, but still they came, reaching out and landing on her lap, too.

She opened every one, smiling when she read about a Muggle-born little girl with frizzy, dark hair and a love of knowledge. There was one from a woman who claimed Hermione had saved her life, and one from a man who didn’t know who he was, asking her for some sort of guidance that she couldn’t offer. Each one was more touching then the last, up until she had only one left.

Hermione gently tore the envelope open, reaching inside for the final note. It was a small, insignificant scrap of ivory-colored paper with only a few lines of writing on it, nothing compared to the patterned stationary and lovely handwriting of some of the other ones. 

I was once a racist. I was a racist and a bigot, against Muggle-borns and their raw, powerful magic, even though I’m only a quarter-blood myself.

It continued, telling Hermione briefly of what had caused the change in him--watching her help bring down the Dark Lord--and thanking her for his new outlook. The last line was what shook her, what differed from all the other letters with similar stories.

Blood doesn’t speak.

The paper fluttered out of her hands, falling facedown onto the desk that she would always think of as Remus Lupin’s. He would sit there for hours, poring over Sirius’s books as if he’d never see another. The memory was painful enough to ground her. 

She remembered now that Draco was a newly-instated, fresh-out-of-training Curse-Breaker and was often forced to go through letters, searching for nasty spells.

No, she thought, standing up and fleeing this House of other people’s possessions in search of Draco Malfoy, who wasn’t really hers to claim either, it doesn’t. Blood doesn’t say a single thing.  
***   
Draco--she couldn’t quite recall when he’d turned into Draco again--was slouched rather charmingly on the side of the road, right across from the Ministry when she Apparated there to look for him, eyes hooded and mouth pulled into a smile. She wiped her hands nervously on her thighs, trying to look as if she knew what she was doing, before she began to walk over.

“Draco,” she said when she got there, the wind tugging at her insistently, urging her to go closer.

“Hermione,” he said, “I knew you’d come.” It didn’t even make sense, but Hermione still felt it, as if he was calling her to him. She’d felt it for years. 

He stood up, reached his hand out as if to touch her cheek, then faltered, letting his hand drop to his side. The look on his face was bemused, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself.

So she kissed him. Hermione reached out and kissed him, dragging him by the collar of his cloak so that they were pressed up like lovers, mouths open and hands roaming and she couldn’t even believe that this was finally, actually happening after so much time spent waiting for him--

“I love you,” he told her, pulling his mouth away from hers to speak, “I always have.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered, finally feeling something other than grey and pain and loss. There was still Pansy, waiting for him with their son, and he was still a pureblood who’d hated everything she was for longer than he hadn’t, but she didn’t particularly care at that moment, happy as she was.

She’d called for him, too, while in the throes of that horrible fever. 

“Draco,” she’d murmured softly, eyes shut tightly against the world. “Help me, Draco.” 

And he had.


End file.
